


A Solitary Duo

by Rethira



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: F/F, Genderqueer Character, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 03:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2008629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rethira/pseuds/Rethira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I don’t think he realised I was wearing boots,” Polly continues.</p><p>Calling them boots was something of an understatement. They were steel-toed, hob-nailed monstrosities. Probably crafted for dwarves, but they fit Polly well enough; she went <i>clang</i> when she walked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Solitary Duo

**Author's Note:**

> Polly has never heard the Sam Vimes "Boots" theory of socio-economic unfairness, but she would probably agree with it if she had.
> 
> Also, despite evidence to the contrary, this is not a fic about clothing (or the lack thereof).
> 
> EDIT: okay I tried to do that linking thing with the footnotes but failed miserably. If anyone knows how to actually make that work, please please tell me, I will be forever indebted to you - I tried [this method](http://tielan.dreamwidth.org/552360.html) but it didn't work so I have no idea.
> 
> EDIT2: listen to the podfic [here!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2249577) many thanks to jelazakazone for their great work on this!

Borogravian weather tended towards wet, grey and overcast. The ground isn’t soil so much as it is mud, and the sky had a perpetual sickly grey tinge, like at any moment a storm bigger than the one in the Year of the Existential Hare might break out.

Subsequently, the dress is ruined in the half hour it takes to get back to the barracks. Hiking up the trailing skirt hadn’t done much good when the coach wheels had spattered mud all over it, and the hem tended to drag anyway. What wasn’t already covered in mud was wrecked by a sudden, brief downpour.

Polly isn’t particularly surprised.

When she finally does make it back to the barracks1, Polly looks like she’s waded through a river and then rolled through some hedges for good measure. Mal looks up, and, after a moment, smirks the way all vampires do – with far too many pointy teeth.

Polly pre-empts the no doubt witty comment by shucking the dress off over her head – Mal looks briefly alarmed. “Hold this, Corporal,” Polly says, her words slightly muffled by silk and crinoline. Mal helps her get the rest of it off and Polly continues, “I’ll be right back,” before nipping behind a tree to do her coat up.

There was something to be said about wearing trousers under your skirts. For one thing, the trousers were mostly dry, thanks to the absorptive powers of three layers of crinoline. For another, it meant Polly had absolutely no difficulties in getting out of the dress as soon as physically possible.

When Polly gets back, once again fully dressed, Mal is holding the sodden and, it must be said, fairly disgusting dress not quite at arm’s length, but certainly far enough away that it doesn’t drip on Mal’s boots. “What are we going to do with it?” Mal asks.

The dress had been a vision. A vision in plum crinoline and ruched sleeves. A vision made, tragically, for a woman with rather more to put in it than Polly had2.

Now, it looked like a sorry mess.

“Bandages,” Polly replies, “definitely bandages.”

An expression of vicious glee crosses Mal’s face. The dress rips neatly in two. That had been something all of Polly’s little lads – or not so lads – had learnt early on. If you needed skirts, dresses or, strangely enough, underwired nightgowns destroyed in a hurry, then Mal was the person for you3.

“So, how was it, sarge?” Mal asks, over a long _riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip_.

“The Prince asked to dance with me.” The next _riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip_ is considerably angrier. “I don’t think he realised I was wearing boots,” Polly continues.

Calling them boots was something of an understatement. They were steel-toed, hob-nailed monstrosities. Probably crafted for dwarves, but they fit Polly well enough; she went _clang_ when she walked. If she kicked someone in the nadgers, there was a very good chance she’d end the family line. She’d got them off of a quartermaster 4 who’d pinched the wrong girl’s bottom.

“I see,” says Mal, who’d seen Polly break a man’s foot by stepping on it in those boots. “How many of his toes did he lose?”

Polly blushes – Oliver’d always done a very good blush, and Polly didn’t seem to have grown out it. “I did tell him I couldn’t dance.” Everyone had agreed that the Prince looked very funny hopping around screaming. Mr Chriek had taken a picture, and told her that Mr de Worde would probably print it on page one. “I don’t think he’ll ask again,” Polly continues.

The dress was now no longer recognisable, except as a pile of long plum coloured strips. “That’s good,” Mal says.

Polly says, only slightly reproachfully, “If you’d come he wouldn’t have asked at all.”

After all, getting kneed in the family jewels was one thing, but vampires were quite another, even if they were Black Ribboners and well known to be more dangerous to a bag of coffee beans than a human being.

Mal’s hands fumble the remains of the dress a little. After a moment, Mal says, “I don’t think anyone would have been very impressed by us dancing.”

“Well, I suppose now we’ll never know,” Polly says.

Mal goes back to tearing up the dress.

 

There had been two dresses. One plum, one baby blue – matching, but for the colours. Baby blue hadn’t suited either of them, although the plum hadn’t been much better. The baby blue dress had gone the same way as the plum – several men now sported fetching baby blue bandages, much to their regiment’s amusement.

They’d been given a choice – formal dresses, or official dress uniforms. It hadn’t been much of a choice. Like all dress uniforms, these ones had been both uncomfortable and unattractive. More pink than red, and enough bustle for three scores of jolly head cooks. Silk and lace and with twice as many petticoats as a normal dress, _and_ a corset three times tighter than anything Polly had ever worn. There hadn’t even been anywhere to display her (pot-metal) medals, or the regimental symbol of a flaming cheese.

Polly had gone for the dress, even if it was hideous. Mal had pretended to lose the invite in the mail; Polly had seen the envelope five times, and each time it had been redirected and shuffled about and not once had it been opened. The day had arrived and Mal had said, perfectly straight faced, “I never saw an invite for me, sarge,” and Polly hadn’t been mean enough to make Mal put on a dress and just come with her.

In a way, Polly understood.

It was the socks. Once you’d had them, you never really lost them. Polly was just fine with putting a petticoat on over the top. Mal... well, Mal _wasn’t_.

 

The sky’s just about clearing; an owl hoots softly, so as to reassure the audience that it is still night-time and not, say, nearing dawn.

Polly can’t see the moon, but that’s a frequent state of affairs in Borogravia.

“Dance with me,” she asks, and Mal looks up from the bandages with only a touch of surprise.

“Not exactly the best terrain for dancing,” Mal comments, which is true. The rain may have stopped, but the mud is still thick and sticky – it sucks at Polly’s boots when she walks.

Polly shrugs and Mal stands up. Mal clucks when Polly stands all wrong, and then swings Polly around like she’s five and learning to dance by standing on Uncle Adalbert’s feet.

“Sergeant Perks,” Mal begins, “do you even know how to dance?”

Polly grins. “Nope.” Uncle Adalbert was never a very good teacher.

Mal sighs very loudly and says, aggrieved, “Well, better late than never.”

There isn’t any music and Polly is pretty sure she lacks any sort of natural rhythm, but none of that really matters. Anyway, vampires have natural style; they make a point of exuding it actually, so if anyone _had_ been around to witness them dancing, they would have proclaimed it one of the most beautiful dances they’d ever witnessed, Polly’s boots not-withstanding.

Mal lowers Polly into a dip and Polly thinks, vaguely, that this is the point where they either kiss romantically or Mal drops Polly into the mud and they all have a good laugh.

Mal opts for a third option; kissing Polly but also overbalancing, so they _both_ fall in the mud.

“Oops,” Mal says, sitting upright. There’s a smear of mud on Mal’s cheek, but it only serves to make Mal look devastatingly rakish, while Polly can already feel the mud sticking in clumps to her hair.

“Interestingly enough,” Polly says, “this is exactly what happened last time someone tried to teach me how to dance.” Mal laughs and drags Polly up; there’s an awful sucking noise and Polly makes a face.

“Race you to the river?” Mal suggests, grinning rakishly.

There are several witnesses to both the following kiss and the subsequent mad dash down to the river, but all of them are, regrettably, non-verbal, and besides which, the creatures of the Borogravian undergrowth had more pressing concerns to attend to5.

Polly pushes Mal in – it used to frustrate her that Mal could be soaked, covered in mud, dressed in rags or deep in a coffee induced delusion and _still_ look like- well like _Mal_. Mal was always supernaturally stylish, even in, Mal had assured Polly, one of those ridiculous old style capes with the huge collar.

These days it doesn’t frustrate Polly so much as give her a studied appreciation for Mal in all sorts of strange situations.

“You look like a drowned rat,” Polly says, grinning widely.

“Feel a bit like one too,” Mal agrees, dragging Polly in too.

Polly comes up shrieking from the cold – no matter how many times she jumps, falls or otherwise enters a Borogravian river, the cold always comes as a surprise – and immediately sets about peeling off her now sodden clothing. Mal helps, and then gently untangles Polly’s hair, until it’s hanging wet and clean down to Polly’s shoulders.

“Your turn, Corporal,” Polly says; Mal obediently strips and lets Polly return the favour.

An owl hoots again. The moon remains obstinately absent.

Softly, Polly asks, “Do you want me to change your paperwork again?”

Mal leans back against Polly, tangling their fingers together. “No,” Mal replies eventually. “I don’t think I can be Maladicta, but I wasn’t really Maladict either.”

Polly kisses the side of Mal’s throat6 and says, “You can just be Mal then.”

Mal relaxes, a little sigh of relief escaping their mouth. “That sounds nice.”

“Good,” Polly replies.

 

This time, dawn really is arriving. A lark starts singing, perhaps a touch too early – light on the Discworld takes a long time to get anywhere and tends to pool in valleys like thick syrup before washing over the high mountains.

Polly pokes Mal in the side and says, “It’s morning.”

Mal snuffles in a vague sort of way and murmurs, “Go back to sleep.”

Polly repeats, in her Sergeant voice, “It’s morning.”

Mal sleepily opens one eye and then grins with all their teeth. “Bed time for vampires.”

“Incorrigible,” Polly replies, but Mal has a point.

It’s the day after a party, they’re not at war and Polly has a nicely warmed up vampire next to her in bed.

“Fine,” Polly concedes, “but today had better be a great big fish.”

“I’m sure it will,” Mal mumbles, already wrapping their arms around Polly’s waist and tugging her closer. “We can find out later though.”

> 1 Here a term meaning two tents strung up between some trees.  
>  2 Although that had been a blessing in disguise. No-one had noticed her wearing her uniform underneath, not when they were distracted by the surprisingly full bosom Polly had managed to obtain overnight.  
>  3 Also bodices, but that was an altogether more private affair, as far as Polly was concerned.  
>  4 Off of his feet, in fact.  
>  5 Most of these involved getting eaten.  
>  6 Mal shivers, because even Black Ribboners have a thing about necks.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic]A Solitary Duo](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2249577) by [jelazakazone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jelazakazone/pseuds/jelazakazone)




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